Geoffrey Chaucer

The church then had a system that governed such matters. In the tenth century, a serial publication of "penitential books" started to appear which explored the subject of sex in every its details, describing every misdeed at length and the penalties that would follow. There was an right-down ban on all sexual activity separate than intercourse between espouse persons, and even that had to be carried kayoed with the aim of procreating. The sexual act, even in man and wife, was considered to be attended by lust and sin unless performed solely for the purpose of procreating. all(a) sorts of prohibitions were placed on the sexual act, even within marriage. Women were singled fall out for particular blame and were targeted by the church with particular harshness. Women had been set as property by the Saxons, and now she was also tempered as the source of all sexual evil. It was argued that sexual misdeed really pertained to women because they tempted men, who would otherwise have remained pure. By the Middle Ages, married women ceased even to have a legal existence. Unmarried women had accepted legal rights and could dispose of their own property on orbit their majority, but married women were only shadows of their husbands. The very being or legal existence of the woman was suspended during the marriage, which was why a man could not grant anything to his wife or precede into any covenant with her. To do so would presuppose her s

It was in this atmosphere that the marriage cut into was conducted, and as noted, the Prologue and Tale of the married woman of bathtub fits into this large exemplar as its beginning. Elements of the marriage debate were derived by Chaucer from French sources, notably a travel book, Le roman de carat by Renclus de Moiliens, and Le miroir de mariage by Deschamps (Braddy 133). The debate takes place as follows: The Wife of Bath first explains her philosophy of life. She is herself in favor of marriage so long as the wife is the ruler of the home. The story she tells carries this discussion forward with the same theme. Her hero sets out to assure what it is that women desire most and returns with the answer--women want to be the master's over their husbands.

The salesclerk is upset by what she has said and by the way she uses regimen to prove her words. Her last husband was, like the Clerk, a clerk at Oxford, which also angers the Clerk. His story is a reply to the wife of Bath and tells of a wife who remained constant and uncomplaining done the worst adversity. The Clerk underlines his story by ending with the wry exhortation for wives to treat their husbands just as the Wife of Bath suggests and so to make them as unhappy as she make her husbands. The Merchant reacts to this because he is unhappily married himself, and his story sess be seen as an attack on the institution altogether. The dandy then tells an incomplete tale of pure romance, and the Franklin reconciles the opposing points of slew by telling a story about how a couple lived in happiness, each respecting the other without seeking to find (Grose 136-137). Clearly, the views of the Wife of Bath have an effect on the others.

The Prologue is a combination of confession, a traditional genre, and a brilliant literary argument in favor of female sovereignty. The tale serves as an face of the argument offered in the prologue and is based on a category tale. The Prologue has been found to be largely or
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